Manuel Márquez, 23, finishes an alfombra, or carpet, made of pine needles and flowers for a Lent procession. About 60 percent of Guatemalans consider themselves to be Protestant, according to the Guatemalan National Institute of Statistics. But in some cities, such as Antigua, Catholicism remains very strong.
José García’s tie is the first thing you notice when he walks into his church. Books of the Bible, the names on spines – John, Mark, Proverbs – are stacked on the tie’s brown fabric.
Soft-spoken with thin-rimmed glasses, he holds a Bible under his arm as he shakes the hand of every member of his congregation, no matter how many there are.
“God bless you, sister. God bless you, brother.”
García, a Guatemala native, has lived in the United States for 32 years, 12 of them in Chattanooga. He started his church, Iglesia de Dios Evangelio Completo de Santidad, on March 10, 2000, he said, with only his wife and two sons as members.
Today he rents the Olivet Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Boulevard, where his congregation of about 80 Latin-American immigrants, most from Guatemala and Mexico, gather for a two-hour service three times a week.